Showing 1 - 10 of 62
Andalusian dreams
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 15/02/2024
» Two Middle Eastern tourists looked excited as they held up a phone to an exquisitely carved arabesque in Nasrid Palace at the Alhambra. No, they're not taking photos. They're comparing the Arabic text on their screen with the 8th century stone calligraphy. I hear them mumble in Arabic -- here's the translation:
The passion of Pasolini
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 10/06/2022
» Pier Paolo Pasolini was born in Bologna on March 5, 1922, and died in a violent, mysterious circumstance on the outskirts of Rome in November 1975. This year marks the centenary of the Italian poet's and filmmaker's birth, and this Sunday at 1pm, the Thai Film Archive will screen Pasolini's first film as director, Accattone, a gloriously austere ode to underclass plight. It will be the first time the 1961 film is screened in Thailand.
The Year of Great Reckoning
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/12/2020
» For filmgoers, it was a year of mortal dread. The screen went dark, like a coffin nailed shut, and is still like that in many places. Faith in cinema as we've known it was rattled, challenged, and endangered with a Biblical overtone; it's a plague we're dealing with, after all. It was a year unlike any other we had seen before in the 125 years since cinema was invented. And while that sounds dispiriting, 2020 has also been a "Year of Great Reckoning" during which the equilibrium was recalibrated and the idea of moving images continues, as it should, to evolve.
The true nature of the beast?
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 20/11/2020
» 'Happy families are all alike," said Tolstoy, "every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Through the prism of history
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/10/2019
» The book's title is printed on its spine: Prism Of Photography: Dispersion Of Knowledge And Memories Of The 6 October Massacre. Thereafter, from the first page on, we have only photographs with no captions.
SEA of delights
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/07/2019
» The Bangkok Asean Film Festival runs until July 8 and features 30 titles. Here are our top picks.
Space oddity
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/12/2018
» Parking curbs, in different colours, are arranged in a pattern in a gallery, which occupies a section of a parking space. In one corner of the room are seven cardboard boxes, which contain dozens of brown, slightly dog-eared log books, handwritten by security guards and caretakers of the National Gallery, dating back to the 1990s. Dry report on daily activities fill page after page. "5pm: closed room 1-4. 5.30pm, close the office. Midnight: new shift starts. Situation normal," reads an entry from March 1998.
Strange brew
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 29/03/2018
» He went down to the crossroads, fell down on his knees, asked the Lord for mercy -- and somehow got it. In this biopic documentary, Eric Clapton -- his place in the pantheon of guitar god-dom guaranteed -- is a tragic genius denounced by his own mother and nurturing a desperate crush on his best friend's wife, which kept his guitar wailing and weeping. Here's a 60s-70s blues-rock maverick who sold his soul to heroin, cocaine, cognac, whatever, and when he emerged from the pit and things began to feel wonderful tonight, he lost his son in a terrible, terrible accident. That a new documentary about his life to date is allowed to end happily is proof that rock'n'roll (and life itself) can cheat the claws of fate and go on for longer than 12 bars.
Visually impaired to make long-distance bike trek
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 23/01/2018
» On Sunday, a caravan of blind cyclists will attempt something arduous: biking from Bangkok to Chiang Mai on a nine-day charity trip.
For your viewing pleasure
Life, Kong Rithdee, Published on 25/12/2017
» In a thoroughbred year for film, here are our must-see picks from 2017.